From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262009AbTLHXou (ORCPT ); Mon, 8 Dec 2003 18:44:50 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262078AbTLHXou (ORCPT ); Mon, 8 Dec 2003 18:44:50 -0500 Received: from parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk ([195.92.249.252]:25746 "EHLO www.linux.org.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262009AbTLHXof (ORCPT ); Mon, 8 Dec 2003 18:44:35 -0500 Message-ID: <3FD50CD6.3070808@pobox.com> Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 18:44:22 -0500 From: Jeff Garzik User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030703 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Linux Kernel Subject: VIA on-chip RNG and crypto... Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org VIA has publicly posted the docs for the 'xstore' and 'xcrypt' instructions in their processors: http://www.via.com.tw/en/viac3/c3.jsp (grab "VIA Padlock {ACE|RNG} Programming Guide" down at the bottom) 'xstore' is an instruction that any program may use, to obtain entropy from the on-chip hardware source (RNG). The in-kernel hw_random driver already supports this (though this support will be moved to the userspace rngd soon). 'xcrypt' provides on-chip AES encrypt and decrypt, similarly useable by any program. They have also supported open source by providing docs and occasionally hardware to myself, Dave Jones, Alan, and others. So, while it might appear this is a shameless plug :) I just really like the technology, and am never shy about promoting good hardware designs, and vendors that work with the open source community. Jeff P.S. In the interest of full disclosure, neither VIA nor my employer prompted me to write this.